Read Online Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories by Thomas Lynch - Free Book Online

in the woods one year, painted white and gold and ten feet tall and wired for lights, big bulbs, that shone through the dark eerily—a sign of the born-again Christian fundamentalist, Michigan militia type of head case he reckoned Larry Ordway must be. And there were the mean-spirited dogs always challenging him at the bend in the road, barking, baring their teeth, the current one now five or six years into its miserable life, looking like the hound of hell with its frothing muzzle and pointed ears. Harold had feared it and picked up his pace to get past its purview and kept an eye out even when he was out of range. He had even taken long detours through the woods to keep out of the dog’s way, his fear getting the best of him until once, the week after Joan had been diagnosed, Harold had waited for the dog, growled back at it as it hunched and snarled, and taunted it with waving arms and timed it perfectly so that when the cur lunged within kicking range, he caught it squarely in its yapping mouth, a perfect punt, flipping it on its backside and sending it yelping back up the drive. It hadn’t really challenged Harold since. Its barking was vicious but still it kept its coweringdistance. Harold kept a stick handy, just in case, half hoping it would give him another go. Sometimes now, after he’d gotten past Ordway’s, he’d hear movement in the dense woods on either side of the railway easement, aside and behind him, and wondered if the dog was following along, waiting to pounce or wanting to make friendly. Harold didn’t know but didn’t trust the thing. He’d turn sometimes and look behind him. Once or twice he thought he caught a glimpse of the bitch crossing the tracks in a blur, maybe stalking him, waiting for its chance to settle the score.
    At Hobo Beach, where the trail ran nearest the lake, Harold stopped to sit and watch the water for one of the eagles that nested nearby or the osprey that nested on a platform placed in the river mouth by the DNR, or anything else that might happen. The rapturous descent of fishing birds, the haunted call of loons, the hovering of kingfishers, the uncommon beauty of common mergansers—these incarnations now remembered, late in the day, late in the year, made him feel a fortunate pilgrim indeed. Above the treeline on the far side of the lake the fat face of the full moon was emerging. Harvest moon, he thought. No, hunter’s moon, then beaver moon, then cold. He ran through the names of moons such as he knew them. There would be moon shadows tonight and light on the water.
    All the docks and boat hoists were stacked on the beach, waiting for the coming winter’s freeze and deep snows and next spring’s thaw—worm moon, he thought in March, pink moon April, May, the flower moon—before being hauled out and reassembled in the water for the high season. The boaters and sunbathers all gone south and the snowmobiles not yet thinking about coming north, the off-season vacancy of late October struck Harold as the best of all times of year.
    This golden harvest aspect of it all, a feast for all souls, the sense of finished work and jobs done well—“Autumn Oak” is what he named the clear-finished, hand-polished number with the fallen-leaf appliqué stitched into the cap panel and the tailored beige linen interior when he first beheld it, and his bosses at Clarksville had agreed with him. They even designed an urn to go with it—same wood, same finish, same falling leaves machine-etched into it—a package deal for the cremation crowd. “The Autumn Oak Ensemble,” they called it in the catalogue, and sold them by the truckload all over the place—the most popular of Clarksville’s hardwood line.
     
    HE SHOULD have been better to Helen. She had never been anything but good to him. Maybe if he’d been more trusting, less damaged goods, not so angry. Maybe if Angela had lived. He didn’t know. He often wished he could do that over again, make it up to her.
    They’d met